And it just goes on ... Shadow of the Beast ST conversion is not that bad. It is playable pretty well. I would say that is medium quality. It could be done better, but not much. And it was discussed here about it a lot. We just need to understand that most of it was done for profit. Some, maybe new aspects of Atari ST architecture and games: machine was not designed for gaming. Basically all is on CPU. If blitter was standard component from beginning it could be better. Actually, all those changes by time were not good for game developers. And it included TOS changes too.On top of all it there was no good and enough doc. for all, for programming necessary technical details. What resulted in very poor IKBD code, often, even by big SW houses like Psygnosis. Some game in 1990 and later, to pull out max of HW on which running should have: Separated code for CPU graphic draw, separated one for blitter draw.Separated audio for YM and for STE DMA.Same for scroll.It is not theory, some did it - like Ghost Battle, Magic Boy. But some 95% made it just to use only 512KB ST capabilities.

Famous Schrodinger's cat hypothetical experiment says that cat is dead or alive until we open box and see condition of poor animal, which deserved better logic. Cat is always in some certain state - regardless from is observer able or not to see what the state is.

wongck wrote:Truly depends on one's taste.For me one of the worst game was the one with all the HYPE about having SEVERAL ( 6 or 8 ) PARALLEL moving background of a beast walking forward and bashing up some stuff along the way. I cannot really remember the name actually.I am sure many of you would because of the hype it created.... and also was on the AMIGA ... so go figure that both computer camps was like "ours is better than yours" mud fights.Sure it was cool for about 2 mins after the eye candy wares off and then it was like "yeah another of those mindless bashing something up"

Never like Bash them up.

Atari will rule the world, long after man has disappeared

sometime my English is a little weird, Google translate is my best friend

Eero Tamminen wrote:I guess this is meant only for commercial games, not free/hobby ones.

Ones that were bought and which greatly disappointed compared to one's expectations, so much that one still vividly remembers them?

Yes, exactly! The games that we paid for because of screenshots! or paid reviews

EvilFranky wrote:Personally I think Shadow of the Beast is an awful game, no matter which platform. It just happens to look good on the Amiga.

It's been discussed 100's of times on this board, but yes, Beast ST could have been MUCH better. Not Amiga level obviously but much better than what we were given. Psygnosis just didn't give a toss.

I'm gonna have to agree with you here, I always thought Shadow of The Beast was a poor game on the Amiga, but my god did it look amazing at the time and sell a ton of Amiga 500's. If I remember correctly the ST port didn't even arrive for at least 18 months after, and it was so drab. All the sprites, including the beast sprite were dropped down to 3 shades of bleh. I know the original Amiga version had a lot of just 3 colour sprites, but the ST conversion just put almost everything in the same pallete. It got worse as soon as you finished the first level, after that, any attempt at making it look close to the Amiga went right out the window. Was just a brown poorly controlled mess.

Steven Seagal wrote:-Roadwars

I actually liked this game Was the first "perfect" arcade port I ever played

Helped that the original arcade hardware was just an Amiga 500 though, and the ST and amiga "ports" were identical because the programmers didn't use any of the amiga features to their fullest apart from non YM audio.

I remember someone scanning an article about Foundations Waste being a soon to be ST based arcade, but that game was terrible. I honestly thought it was PD, because I think it was on a Zero Cover Disk, along with possibly Trantor?

penguin wrote:- Yolanda (can't believe it was made by Steve Bak)

I always liked this game, remember getting the demo on ST format? Loved it just because it was so frantic, each level was so fast, and one step wrong, or even wait too long, and DEAD. Usually by everything setting on fire

X3peri_MENTaL wrote:Btw, Joe Blade and Edd the Duck were not that bad IMHO.

This is why this thread was a good idea, I HATE Edd the Duck, it was unfair, it made you die every five seconds, and yet you still had a good experience with it. Joe blade came free with my ST when I bought it too, and I could never get further than setting off a bomb and game over

Even Zoll who said this thread shouldn't exist has helped it move on to 2 pages by posting in it more than once.

Last edited by Hazzardus on Thu Aug 17, 2017 6:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Folks, ever heard about trainers, cheats ? We did them for you OK, here is one example: JetSet Willy - famous Sinclair Spectrum game, and is converted to ST too. It can't be finished because bug, But not much people was aware of it, because game is damn hard, so without trainer is almost impossible to reach finish. And I have no clue is that bug fixed in ST version.

Talking about buggy games: Iron Lord .Talking about tournaments with bad crack: Son Shu Shi .I'm really 'impressed' how some errors went unnoticed over decades.

Famous Schrodinger's cat hypothetical experiment says that cat is dead or alive until we open box and see condition of poor animal, which deserved better logic. Cat is always in some certain state - regardless from is observer able or not to see what the state is.

Hazzardus wrote:Everyone likes to talk about the best ST classic games, but no-one ever mentions the ones to avoid.

That's because we only remember the games we like, not the ones we didn't like

I can list a few games that disappointed me though. Xenon 2 in particular, that was a very disappointing game. Xenon was so good, and then the hyped Xenon 2 ended up as a sluggish, slow-paced mediocre game. And then there's Wings of Death, technically brilliant but mediocre graphics and no gameplay.

AtariZoll wrote:Talking about buggy games: Iron Lord .Talking about tournaments with bad crack: Son Shu Shi .I'm really 'impressed' how some errors went unnoticed over decades.

Yeah, same here. Son Shu Shi is notorious now, but how it went unnoticed for so long is almost unbelievable.

The only game I ever experienced a bad crack with actually at the time was the first version of the Automation Rick Dangerous 2. I think it was even joked about in the Medway or Pompey crack version of it at the time (can't remember which now)

And Zoll: Iron lord! Oh god I must have tried to wipe that from my memory! Such amazing Box Art, Such great screenshots, and then, oh god what a buggy game! It even got rated ST Format GOLD!

I actually liked this game Was the first "perfect" arcade port I ever played

Helped that the original arcade hardware was just an Amiga 500 though, and the ST and amiga "ports" were identical because the programmers didn't use any of the amiga features to their fullest apart from non YM audio.

I remember someone scanning an article about Foundations Waste being a soon to be ST based arcade, but that game was terrible. I honestly thought it was PD, because I think it was on a Zero Cover Disk, along with possibly Trantor?

If people like a game, it's not that bad. It leaves us with few really bad games on the ST. Fondations Waste has a nice soundtrack and a great concept, but is sluggish.Thundercats is cool IMO.

Chopper X is horrible but it's one of the first games I checked on an emulator. How come?

Steven Seagal wrote:...Chopper X is horrible but it's one of the first games I checked on an emulator. How come?

Of course. Steven Seagal is known by his 'talent' to chose poor movie scripts

Famous Schrodinger's cat hypothetical experiment says that cat is dead or alive until we open box and see condition of poor animal, which deserved better logic. Cat is always in some certain state - regardless from is observer able or not to see what the state is.

Famous Schrodinger's cat hypothetical experiment says that cat is dead or alive until we open box and see condition of poor animal, which deserved better logic. Cat is always in some certain state - regardless from is observer able or not to see what the state is.

quite interesting topic... especially when posters explain why they don't like certain games and not only post a list of games Sometimes you find your favourite game being the worst game for someone else.

Also makes you wonder how the game designers was thinking when they released such bad games... i mean was the game in it's current state the vision they had when they started doing the game or was it a rushed release forced by the publisher?And if the game designers was they only ones (beta)testing the game before release so did the game usually end up too difficult.... it is easy for the designer to complete the game but it seems they rarely thought about the actual consumers who usually was average gamers wich most of the time was forced to rely on cheats.Shadow of the Beast 2 is a good example of a difficult game wich would have been so much better with a save option... maybe 3 save spots in the game and it would have been a so much better gaming experience.

Stefan jL wrote:And if the game designers was they only ones (beta)testing the game before release so did the game usually end up too difficult.... it is easy for the designer to complete the game but it seems they rarely thought about the actual consumers who usually was average gamers wich most of the time was forced to rely on cheats.

I remember reading in ST Format back in the day that the designers of Rick Dangerous fell into this trap. They playtested it so much that they thought it was too easy, and kept upping the challenges, resulting in a game that is fiendishly unforgiving, but also great fun if you persevere.